Sweet Dream Baby

by Sterling Watson

  Beulah gasps. “Well, I never! Come on, Caroline.” Her chin quivers.

  Caroline gets up blinking like she’s trying to find her way out of a dark room. She looks at Beulah and my Aunt Delia. “You two need to cool off.”

  My Aunt Delia turns to the window. “Good-bye, Caroline.”

  • • •

  We’re supposed to be at the Baptist Youth Group in Warrington, but we go back to the river to look for the gold cross. My Aunt Delia thinks maybe she shook it off on the bank when she was putting on her clothes so fast. She says it’s a long shot, but maybe we’ll find it. She sneaks a flashlight from Grandpa Hollister’s car, and we drive out there. It’s creepy in the woods at night, and there’s a cloud of mist snaking up and down the river, and my Aunt Delia sends me back to the path halfway between the car and the bank. She says, “Stay there, Killer, and keep watch. I’ll go look for the cross.”

  I want to go with her, but I don’t say so. I do what she tells me. I’m scared for her, and I’m just plain scared, but I don’t say so. I stand in the path for a while, then I move into the woods and stand with the dew dripping on me and skeeters whining around my head until I see her flashlight beam come back along the path. “Did you find it?”

  “No,” is all she says.

  The next day my Aunt Delia and me are in the living room playing Monopoly. I’ve got Boardwalk and Park Place, and she has the whole side from New York Avenue to St. Charles Place. My Grandma Hollister comes in the front door. She stops in the foyer and heaves a sigh because it’s so hot outside. She’s wearing her white organdy dress with the black belt and a string of coral beads. She’s wearing her black and white spectator pumps and carrying her matching handbag. It’s her church committee outfit.

  She looks worried. She says, “Delia, I just talked to Mrs. Dagle at the Tri Delta chapter meeting, and she happened to mention that they missed you at the youth group the other night.”

  My Aunt Delia looks up with the dice in her hand. She’s about to throw, and she doesn’t want to land on my property. Her eyes jump with fear, then she covers herself with a stretch of her arms and a yawn. She puts down the dice and says, “Well, she was right. I wasn’t there. Travis and me went out driving around.”

  My Grandma Hollister says, “Travis, come with me.” She turns and walks into her bedroom. She leaves the door open for me. I look at my Aunt Delia. I can feel my stomach filling up with cold. My Aunt Delia looks at me hard and draws a finger across her lips, and I get up and go into my Grandma Hollister’s bedroom.

  She’s sitting on the bed. Her white gloves are folded on her handbag on the bed beside her. Her hands are clasped and her mouth is tight. She looks determined, but she’s no match for my Aunt Delia. I know that. Then I see Grandpa Hollister sitting at the little desk in the corner by the window. It’s where he does his accounts. I didn’t even know he was home.

  My Grandma Hollister reaches out and pulls me close by the shoulders. When she looks into my eyes, I see worry and hurt. I still like her, but she’s weak, and I’m not going to be like that. She says, “Travis, where did you and Aunt Delia go last night when you didn’t go to the youth group?”

  I look into her eyes. It surprises me that my hands don’t sweat, and I’m looking at her so straight, even with Grandpa Hollister over in the corner working on his sheriff papers. I say, “We just went out driving around.”

  Grandma Hollister screws her eyes down tighter and grips my shoulders harder. “Where did you drive to, Travis? You must have gone somewhere.”

  I smile. I shrug. “We went to the Dairy Queen in Warring-ton. We had Cokes and french fries and listened to the radio.”

  My Grandpa Hollister clears his throat and leans back in his chair. I look over at him. He’s not looking at me, but he’s listening. I say, “We sat there for a long time just listening to the songs on the radio. We like to do that.”

  My mind storms, then clears, and I see the last time we went to Warrington. We sat in the Dairy Queen parking lot and listened to the radio. Kids from around the county came in their cars, and we said hey to them. This funny song came on the radio for the first time: “Purple People Eater.” It made us laugh.

  My Grandma Hollister holds my shoulders tight. “Travis, are you telling me the truth?”

  When she says “truth,” Grandpa Hollister looks over at me. She’s never asked me a question like this before. I don’t like it, but I smile and say, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She takes me by the hand and walks me back to the living room where my Aunt Delia sits at the table counting her Monopoly money. My Aunt Delia looks up and smiles. My Grandma Hollister says, “Delia, come with me.”

  My Aunt Delia looks at me, and then at Grandma Hollister standing with her hands on her hips by the bedroom doorway. I look into my Aunt Delia’s eyes, and I sing: “One eye, one horn, flying purple people eater.” I sing it low, under my breath. My back’s to Grandma Hollister, and I wink at my Aunt Delia. She looks confused. She doesn’t get it. We hold our eyes together for as long as we can, and I’m sending her thought letters about the Dairy Queen in Warrington. Cokes, french fries, and purple people eaters. She gets up and goes into the bedroom.

  The door closes, and I wait. I count my money and arrange my deeds. I rub my hands together because they’re sweating now. The cold in my stomach moves down into my legs.

  Five minutes later, the door opens, and my Aunt Delia comes out smiling. My Grandma Hollister doesn’t come out. My Aunt Delia and me play for a while longer, then she stretches and yawns and says, “I’m tired, Travis. I think I’ll go up and take a snooze, okay?”

  I say, “Okay,” and she leaves. I wait a while, then go up, too.

  When I come in, she’s sitting on her bed with her knees up under her chin. She tightens her jaw, tilts her head to the side, and says, “You’re a good guy, Killer. You saved our butts.” We’re like two soldiers after a battle.

  “Did you get it?” I ask her.

  “I got it,” she says.

  “The Dairy Queen?”

  “The Dairy Queen. We had french fries and Cokes and listened to the radio.”

  She holds out her hand to me, and I take it. We shake, and I know it’s a bargain. We lie together from now on.

  • • •

  My Aunt Delia and Caroline and Beulah make up on the phone. My Aunt Delia apologizes and says it was just the heat and the boredom and the long summer. They come over, and we sit up in my Aunt Delia’s room listening to the radio. I see how glad they are to be here, and I know they need my Aunt Delia more than she needs them. I know they’re not real without her, just like I’m not now. So much of what I know and what I am now is because of her.

  We listen to the radio, and they talk about who’s cool and who’s not, and what Elvis is doing in the Army, and finally the talk runs down, and Caroline says, “Let’s go to Tolbert’s and see who’s there.”

  I know my Aunt Delia doesn’t want to go, but she can’t let them know.

  Twenty-eight

  Three cars are parked at the curb in front of Tolbert’s—Bick’s red Oldsmobile, Ronny’s white Ford pickup, and Griner’s midnight-blue street rod. We pull up behind the rod, and Caroline shapes her bangs with her fingers, and Beulah picks some lipstick from the corner of her mouth with her little fingernail. They both look at the cool green windows trying to see who’s inside. I look over at my Aunt Delia. Her face is as pale as it was in the moonlight the night we went up to Widow Rock and I chunked Bick with a rock. Her hand shakes when she takes the key from the ignition and shoves it in her jeans.

  The jukebox is playing inside. It’s the Everly Brothers, “Walk right back to me this minute. Bring your love to me, don’t send it. I’m so lonesome every day.” Mr. Tolbert’s at the cash register selling a can of Prince Albert to a farmer in a khaki shirt and green galluses. Ronny and Bick sit in a booth. Griner’s in anot
her as far from them as he can get. He’s got a cup of coffee in front of him and his face in a paperback book. Bick and Ronny are halfway through two large Cokes. Two women I recognize from church sit in a booth closer to Bick and Ronny than to Griner. They lean across the table, talking over two lemonades. We all walk through the cold, peppermint-tasting air to the fountain and take stools and dangle our feet into the room.

  Everybody says, “Hey,” except Griner, but we don’t sound the same. We sound like we’re all suddenly strangers. Bick doesn’t look at my Aunt Delia. He just stares at his Coke like he’s never seen one before. The jukebox stops playing, and Ronny says, “I been feeding that thing for an hour. Somebody cough up a quarter.” He’s smiling, but it’s his mean smile. Beulah and Caroline look at each other and raise their chins a little higher. Beulah always says girls don’t put money in the jukebox when there are boys around.

  Ronny says, “Hey, Kenny, whyn’t you shuck a quarter out of those greasy Levi’s.”

  Griner doesn’t look up. He just keeps reading, but his jaw grinds, and the muscle jumps. Ronny says to all of us, “Ole Kenny’ll listen all day, but he won’t pay. I guess he figures he’s entitled.”

  One of the grown ladies looks over and says, “You can leave it quiet in here, and we won’t mind.”

  The other one nods like she does in church when the preacher says something particularly scriptural. They lean together and go back to talking.

  Mr. Tolbert calls from the front. “I’ll be with ya’ll in a minute.”

  My Aunt Delia gets up and goes over to the jukebox. She stands there sorting change in her hand and pretending to read the numbers and letters. It’s all wrong. The stiff way she moves, the way she holds her head down between her shoulders, the way she studies what we all memorized a long time ago. She feeds the slot and punches in three songs.

  The bell at the front rings as the farmer leaves. Mr. Tolbert walks over and takes our orders. I get a shake and Beulah, Caroline, and my Aunt Delia get Cokes. We turn back around and dangle our legs. The jukebox plays Pat Boone: “My lonely heart aches with every wave that breaks over love letters in the sand.”

  Ronny looks over at us and says, “Ole Travis and his harem. Hey, Travis Buddy, you mind if I dance with one of your girlfriends?”

  I don’t know what to say. I can feel the red start in my cheeks. Ronny gets up and holds out his hand to Beulah, and she slides off the stool, and they start slow-dancing in the small space between the counter and the booths. The two women watch Beulah and Ronny pressing close together, Beulah’s hips slipping from side to side and Ronny’s butt muscular in his tight jeans. They finish their lemonades and leave, whispering.

  Ronny lifts his chin from the top of Beulah’s head where he’s left a dent in her hair spray and says, “Hey, Delia, dance with Bick. He’s too shy to ask you.”

  Bick lifts his Coke and taps it twice on the table. He doesn’t look at my Aunt Delia. She closes her eyes, then she slides off her stool and goes over to him and holds out her hand. Griner lowers the book to watch them. He looks like a man who hasn’t eaten for a week standing outside the window of a restaurant in the rain. Bick looks up at my Aunt Delia, and I can’t tell what’s in his eyes. It’s nothing I’ve seen there before. He takes her hand before he stands up, and she leans back and pulls him out of the booth, and they dance the rest of Pat Boone.

  The next song’s a slow one, too, and that’s strange. My Aunt Delia usually mixes in the jumpy ones. It’s “The Sea of Love.” Bick holds her, but not too close, and they move around in lazy circles, sometimes bumping into Ronny and Beulah, sometimes just standing in one place and swaying from side to side. I look at Griner and catch him peeking over his book at them dancing. I think he might do something. He might do it right now. I remember the laugh from the riverbank.

  My Aunt Delia still isn’t moving right. She dances like the floor’s shifting under her. I remember her swimming, turning and curling in the water like she lived there. Like a water animal. When I think of the river, my throat gets thick, and my mouth gets dry, and I turn to the counter and take a sip of my shake. When I turn back, the song’s over. Bick sits down, facing us now and looking straight at my Aunt Delia. I still can’t tell what’s in his eyes. It’s not the same old sorry I saw coming from the back of the room at the Baptist Youth Group. He’s past sorry now and into something else, and it makes me want to leave. It makes the hair come up on the back of my neck.

  The next song is Buddy Holly, “True Love Ways.” It’s slow, too, and Ronny dances it with Caroline. When they finish, he goes over to the booth, picks up his Coke, and finishes it. He says, “Come on, Bick, let’s go.”

  Beulah says, “Hey, you guys, stay a while.”

  Caroline says, “Yeah, where you goin’, anyway?”

  Bick stands up and looks at my Aunt Delia. She doesn’t want to look back, but she has to. Their eyes are like a match and dry grass. Then Bick and Ronny walk out.

  Griner lowers the book to watch them leave. He looks at my Aunt Delia. She looks at him like she’s been waiting for this, like it’s the thing she had to do since we heard that laughter come from the riverbank and Griner’s engine winding down. She swallows and says, “Kenny, would you like to dance with me? I’ll put another quarter in.”

  Griner looks at her for a long time. His face is pale, and I think of him in the shadows of the grease rack and working the graveyard shift out at the box factory and working on engines in the old barn behind that falling-down house in the country. He seems like something from the night, the shade, not the sun. He says, “Delia, you know I don’t dance.”

  She pushes off from the stool and goes over to him in that stiff, strange way. Caroline and Beulah put their Cokes down. Beulah puts her hand over her mouth. Mr. Tolbert stops washing glasses to watch. My Aunt Delia stands in front of Griner and holds out her hand. She says, “Come on, Kenny, dance with me. It’s time you learned. I’ll teach you.”

  Griner looks at her, then down at his book, then back up. Her hand hangs in the air between them, and I hope I’m the only one who sees it trembling. My Aunt Delia says, “I’ll teach you, Kenny.”

  Griner looks at the green windows. Ronny’s truck and Bick’s red Oldsmobile are gone from the curb now. He looks back at my Aunt Delia. “You already had your dance for the day. You don’t need one with me.” He looks back down at the book. He pretends he’s reading, but his eyes aren’t taking the print.

  Mr. Tolbert says, “Kenny, be a gentleman and dance like she asked you.”

  Griner doesn’t say anything.

  My Aunt Delia lets her hand drop. She walks straight to the front door, and we all get up and follow her. Behind us, Mr. Tolbert mutters, “Man didn’t turn a lady down like that, not in my day.”

  My Aunt Delia hits the door with the heel of her hand, and the bell rings.

  Outside in the sudden heat, she stops and looks over at Griner’s street rod. I see her chin go up and her legs stiffen, then she walks to the rod and bends down into it.

  Caroline and Beulah come out behind me, and Beulah says, “Delia, what are you doing now?”

  Caroline laughs her mean laugh. “Take his keys, Delia. If he won’t dance, let him walk.”

  My Aunt Delia walks back to her side of the white Chevy. I get in the back like always, and Beulah and Caroline stuff themselves into the front with my Aunt Delia. We pull away from the curb, and my Aunt Delia throws her right arm over the back of the seat, steering with her left. Her hand is a white fist in front of me. The fist opens, and the gold cross falls out of it into my lap.

  Twenty-nine

  “It was hanging from his rearview mirror,” my Aunt Delia says.

  We’re sitting on her bed up under the slope of the roof. She’s got her legs crossed and I have too, and we’ve got the window open between us. Below in the backyard, the grapes in the arbor are black ripe, and the birds
are at them. Marvadell comes out the back door with a broom. “Shoo, shoo, you scounrel thieves!”

  The blue jays and sparrows scatter away, but they’ll come back. They always do. The black cat that ate the baby birds my first morning here sits in the tall grass over by the privy. He switches his tail and watches the birds. There’s a cool breeze high in the oaks, and sometimes my Aunt Delia leans toward the window screen as we talk, and she lifts her hair away from her neck to let the air at it.

  She says, “Did he put it there so I’d see it and take it, or was he just going to keep it and ride around town letting everybody see?” She puts her hand to the gold cross at her neck. She’s wearing it again. She asked me if she should, and I said yes. Anything else would look funny.

  I say, “It could be either one.”

  Her eyes watch me for answers because I’m a boy, and she thinks I know how boys think, but I’m thinking about Griner. What he’s like, what he’s really like. Back home in Omaha, when we saw guys like Griner in leather jackets and ducktail haircuts, my dad told me they were hoods and greasers and drugstore cowboys. He said they were punks, and they acted tough but they were no match for a Marine hand to hand. He said the country was going to hell, and it was going there on the back of a Harley Davidson driven by some punk who thought he was James Dean. But I don’t think Griner’s like that. At least I didn’t until he spied on us at the river and stole my Aunt Delia’s necklace.

  I liked the way he showed me things under the grease rack. How the pump fills the tank with air to lift the rack. How to take out the old oil and put the filter on. Maybe I’ll work on cars someday. I like the way Griner reads books in front of people and doesn’t care what they think about it. The doctor’s wife gives my Aunt Delia books, and she hides them in the top of her closet in a hat box with her picture albums because Grandma Hollister would be scandalized if she saw them. I think they must be books about men and women. I think my Aunt Delia and Griner are more alike than her and Bick, even though Griner’s poor, and Bick’s rich and his family name is written with ours on the pedestal of the Confederate monument down at the park.